‘Sorry.’
‘Diane!’ Tom had of course had his brother’s mistress pointed out to him long ago by someone, perhaps Valerie Cossom, who took such an interest in George’s activities. Tom had never learnt Diane’s surname and had, in so far as he ever thought of her, used her first name, which now instinctively came out.
Diane, with her dark little cap of short hair, looked much the same whether her head was wet or dry, which was not the case with Tom. With wet hair his face looked gaunter, fiercer, older. Diane did not know who he was.
‘It’s Tom, Tom McCaffrey. Don’t be afraid.’ Tom was not sure why he said this. He took hold of the strap of her blue bathing costume.
‘Oh - please let go — ’ Diane’s wet hand scrabbled helplessly at Tom’s hand. She gulped water. ‘Let go, you’re pushing me under.’
Tom let go, but barred her way, treading water and touching her arms with his finger tips. At close quarters her wet face looked childish, red, the make-up a little smudged.
‘How’s George?’ said Tom.
‘I haven’t seen him.’
‘May I come and talk to you, just talk, you know? I’d like that. George wouldn’t mind, would he?’
‘No.’
‘So I can come?’
‘I mean don’t come, please don’t come.’
‘I just want to talk to an older woman, I need advice.’
‘No.’
‘Be a sport, Diane. I say, is it true that George has murdered Stella? That’s what they’re all saying!’ Tom uttered these idiotic words as a sort of joke. He now saw Diane’s small face crumple into a grimacing animal’s mask, and in a second, she shot away from him as swiftly as an otter, her departing kick jabbing his leg. Tom did not try to follow. He felt degraded and rotten. He thought, I will go and see her, I don’t care!
‘Hello, Tom!’ It was Alex. They danced round each other in the warm water, touching each other like ballet dancers pretending to be boxers.
‘Shall we go home, then?’ said Pearl a bit crossly to Hattie.
Pearl and Hattie were still in happy ignorance of John Robert’s plan, since the sage had not yet managed to compose the letter which was to explain it. In fact he had now decided to overcome his nervous reluctance and to visit the Slipper House in person on the following day.
Pearl had at last persuaded Hattie to come to the Institute. Hattie had bought a sober black one-piece bathing suit with a skirt at Bowcocks. She had also visited Anne Lapwing’s Boutique with Pearl, and had bought a summer dress, which Pearl chose. Now today it was snowing.
Hattie and Pearl were standing in Diana’s Garden beside the railings which surrounded the pitiful jumpings of Lud’s Rill. Pearl wore a hooded anorak and trousers, Hattie an overcoat and a woollen cap and woollen stockings. They had got as far as the changing-room when Hattie suddenly funked it.
‘What was the matter anyway?’
‘It was just like Denver.’
‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘And it’s all so public, I don’t want all those women looking at me.’
‘But people have looked at you all over the place, and not only women!’
‘Yes, but it’s different here, it’s awful. And everyone swims so frightfully well — ’
‘So do you.’
‘No, not - I’m sorry.’
‘Well, shall we go or stay?’
Hattie had been appalled by the crowded and so public scene in the women’s changing-rooms, with so many women of all shapes and sizes with practically nothing (sometimes nothing) on, taking showers and standing about and chattering to each other. The place was so full and animated and noisy, and you couldn’t keep your cubicle, you had to carry your clothes to a locker and have a key to look after and so on. Hattie had pictured something much more dignified and discreet and private, and how, in her black costume, she would issue quietly to the water and slip noiselessly in. Pearl had said to her, ‘No one will bother you, no one will notice you, why do you think you’re so important!’
Hattie said, ‘I don’t, I just want to be quiet.’ There was little quietness in the changing-room, indeed it was difficult to find anywhere to stand without being jostled by wet fleshy women. And although she did not explain it properly to Pearl, the dérèglement of Hattie’s senses was increased by something quite unexpected which filled her with a terrible sick nostalgia before she could even make out what it was. The combination of the warmth, the smell of wet wood, and the snowy light outside brought back so intensely the atmosphere of skiing in the Rockies, at Aspen, the return from snow into the warm wooden interior with dripping skis and wet boots. Hattie had never been very happy at Denver, but this piercing reminder came with a whiff of a far-off home, a lost home, a lost childhood.
‘Let’s go back. We’ll light a fire in the kitchen like you said. Don’t be cross with me, Pearlie.’
When Tom, now dressed, approached them, Emma and Hector Gaines, having discovered each other as historians, had been talking for some time. Emma was muffled up in a long fur-collared coat and a Trinity scarf, both of which had belonged to his father. The smell of the coat had mingled disturbingly with the smell of his mother’s face powder on her letter which, just arrived, he had thrust into the coat pocket as he was leaving the house. Now, out of doors, it was too cold to smell anything. Hector had abandoned his dejeuner sur l’herbe act, and was in swimming-trunks desperately resolved to display his not inconsiderable physique to Anthea: he had been a rugger blue at Cambridge, and had a lot of red curly hair on his chest. (Anthea had not turned up, however.) He had boiled himself scarlet in the stews, but was careful not to exhibit his mediocre swimming. Now, as he glanced anxiously around, he was shivering with cold. Emma had steered him off the emotive topic, on which Emma’s accent had started him, of nineteenth-century Irish history. They had been discussing The Triumph of Aphrodite.